Revealing Eden (13 page)

Eden took matters into her own hands and pointed to Bramford.
“Cowode!”

“Quiet!” he said, pushing her face into his chest.

The incredibly wonderful feel of his warm body—not a Holo-Image, but a real, live body—stunned her. She registered the sensation of his arms around her bare thighs and shoulders. Pressing her cheek against his hard chest, she heard his heart beat against her ear—
alive
.

Eden’s world stopped. Her joints loosened, her heart felt expansive, even her mind stretched to find Bramford remarkably appealing. At the same time, she became aware of a dangerous, inescapable abyss opening up inside of her. If she gave into her feelings, she might be lost forever.

She croaked out a plea. “I beg you, Bramford, put me down.”

Then a loud cry rose up from the Huaorani. Unbelievably, they fell to their knees and began to chant in ecstatic voices.

“El Tigre! El Tigre!”

Eden couldn’t understand them without her Life-Band. However, their body language reminded her of reverent penitents in bygone churches. Was it possible the warriors worshipped Bramford? Only one thing was clear: they weren’t going to kill him.

He didn’t seem surprised by the praise, either. He puffed out his chest and grinned, as arrogant as ever.

Her father peered out the cabin door, quickly assessing the situation. “They think you’re
El Tigre
, the Jaguar Man. Imagine, the long-awaited Aztec God.”

Ronson Bramford a god?
Eden laughed out loud.

Now, the tribesmen looked at her with equal reverence.

“See, Daught?” her father added. “You’re divine by association with
El Tigre.”

For once, her father seemed proud of her—for being the beast’s sidekick.

The way Bramford sucked up the glory revolted Eden. He made a stately descent, bestowing his new subjects with a regal look. Then he dumped her into the backseat of the lead vehicle. She scooted under a tattered tarp and watched him rip off his puny T-shirt. Probably unfit for a god.

In spite of her disgust, Eden’s eyes riveted on his broad, dark chest that gleamed in the sunlight. Even the molecules of air seemed to fall away from his powerful physique. Maybe he did deserve to be worshiped, she admitted. Then, as he waved imperiously to his adoring public, she wanted to slap him.

For once Aunt Emily had gotten it right.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know
.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

Two tribesmen set Eden’s father on the seat beside her. The tarp didn’t cast enough shade for both of them. Already, she felt the prickly heat in her body, the sweat dripping down her back. She inched towards the border of hot light, begrudging her father each centimeter of shade, and hating herself for it.
Promise you will take care of your father
.

As usual, he seemed oblivious to any physical threat. He took out a small notebook from his shirt pocket and began to scribble.

“Incredible,” he said. “The Huaorani have waited since 3,000
B.C.
for the Jaguar Man to save them.”

“And just what is he supposed to do?” Eden asked.

“Appease the spirit world.”

“Naturally. Because Bramford is so appeasing.”

“What?” Her father laughed but she knew he didn’t get it. “The idea of spirits may seen counterintuitive to our way of thinking,” he continued. “And yet, thousands of years ago a prophecy was told that one day the greatest of shamans, a real Jaguar Man, would come to save the people from the destruction of their lands.”

Eden looked out at the sad, hardscrabble earth and sighed. “Well, he’s too late.”

“Perhaps not,” her father said with a thoughtful air.

“Don’t tell me you believe in this fairy tale?”

“Often, sometimes centuries later, science validates folk wisdom. The Indians believe the great shaman will fly into the spirit world by embodying the jaguar in form and spirit.”

She watched the newly anointed Jaguar Man command the men to load supplies into the vehicles. “So he intended to dominate the world, after all,” she said. “Jamal was right. Bramford never had any intention of helping people. He was always a beast at heart.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge, Daught.” Her father looked up from his notes, adding, “This is the happiest day of my life.”

How then did her birth rank? Or did Eden count at all?

She gasped as Bramford leapt into the passenger seat from several yards away.
Show off
. The rusty vehicle creaked, listing to one side with his weight. Her father beamed, while Eden wished she’d never been born.

Behind them, the Huaorani climbed into the packed cars. Bramford turned to face the company and raised a triumphant arm. He announced their destination in a booming voice.

“Vamos a la Zona Intangible.”

“Where is that?” Eden said.

He gave her a nasty grin. “No Man’s Land.”

Exactly what she most feared: now, she’d never find anyone to mate.

E
DEN SHIFTED her aching back on the wooden seat, as the vehicle jounced along a rutted road. If only she could relax. But she held her body rigid, as if she could ward off the boundless, sunlit world. For hours they’d driven past miles of mud-baked shanties and desolate fields with an occasional tree or small rodent scurrying past. Not a living soul appeared.

She felt dirty and grimy from the layers of dust that coated her skin. She’d tied the company T-shirt around her nose and mouth to filter the dust and the nauseating smell of plant petrol. The shirt stuck to her skin, wet with sweat. Even if she’d been brave enough to jump out of the car, she lacked the energy. Gummy humidity chained her listless body to the seat. She lifted a hand with the odd feeling that it didn’t belong to her, and waved away dive-bombing mosquitoes.

Burning rays edged under the tarp onto her legs, as the relentless sun marched across a baked sky. Eden considered a sunburned patch on her thigh with numb desperation. Had her white blood cells shouted an alarm?
Hurry to the defense
. Still, it would be a losing battle. She might last a week or two before she got The Heat.

She stared daggers at the back of Bramford’s head. The
beast seemed to enjoy the ride. His broad back and alert posture reminded her of a big cat attuned to subtle signs. Signs Eden couldn’t read without her Life-Band, thanks to him.

For the umpteenth time, her fingers crawled like spiders over the red backpack that lay on her lap, hoping to feel the outline of a hidden Life-Band. Once more she thought of Shen, whose Chinese name meant strong spirit. It was an odd choice in a soulless world. If only Eden could connect with him, she just hoped he’d live up to his name. And what if Shen came? Would she be able to convince Bramford to send her and her father back home? Maybe by then her father would have served his purpose. If he lived that long.

Wait and see. That’s what Father would say
.

The memory of a sterile laboratory flashed in Eden’s mind in sharp contrast to the bleak landscape around her. How eager she’d been at the age of six to please her father. But she’d botched her first DNA analysis by adding a twenty-fourth pair of chromosomes. It was the first time he voiced his simple philosophy.

—
Wait and see, Daught
.

—For what?

—Progress
.

—But I failed
.

The edges of his mouth had curled into a half-smile, the best he could offer.

—
Some of the biggest discoveries have come from plans gone awry. Think of Albert Einstein unable to obtain a university job. For two years he suffered odd jobs and even questioned his goal of becoming a physicist. Imagine that
.

Forced to take a lowly position as a clerk at the patent
office, Einstein found ‘a kind of salvation,’ as he put it. The regular salary and stimulating work of evaluating patent claims freed him to think, even to dream. He began to publish important physics papers and change the world
.

You see, Daught, we must be patient. One door closes and another opens. Wait and see
.

Eden believed her father knew everything. And so she had waited for someone to see past her skin color and recognize the Real Eden. After all, didn’t everyone share the same DNA? In the end, there had been nothing to wait for but a treacherous Coal. All over again, Eden felt the sting of Jamal’s betrayal.

Lost in the bouncing rhythm of the car ride and the merciless heat, she began to obsess on his evasive remarks, the double-sided meanings and clever prodding. His deception had been plain to see if only she’d looked. How Eden wished she’d listened to Austin’s warnings, or been smarter, prettier, darker, better.

By the time the convoy arrived at a small encampment along a river, Eden was desperate to burrow into a shady spot. At least the sun hid like a gauzy pearl in the hazy sky. Sad, gray clouds nestled in the treetops, as if abandoned there.

She shook off the T-shirt and stretched her limbs. Waves of blackness passed behind her eyes, as she stood. When had her last meal been?

Leaning against the vehicle, she eyed the surroundings with little hope. Patches of wild jungle encircled a string of ramshackle huts. Native women and children in tattered rags stood by, staring blankly at the new arrivals. They looked ill with patchy hair, and red, scaly rashes on their brown skin. The children’s stomachs were swollen, their eyes lifeless. Two
drunken men sprawled in a heap of garbage. One of them raised his head, eyed the commotion, then spit and turned over.

An antique boom box filled the air with pounding music, each beat twisting the knot in Eden’s head tighter. The fast, driving, spoken lyrics told a gruesome tale of violence and revenge. A typical example of man’s headlong race to destruction in the late twentieth century. If only they had understood, she thought, staring at the blighted environment.

Bramford’s gaze raked over her as he passed her by. She watched him head into a palm grove, mesmerized by the rippling of his muscled back and hips. He moved with the simple grace and powerful confidence of a predator. No wasted energy, no self-consciousness. What must that be like?

Eden hefted the backpack, following the men towards the river that appeared in layers of green and black at the edge of the camp. Suddenly, the ground seemed to shift underneath her. But no, she realized, dozens of columns of leaves moved around her.
Atta colombica
, known as leaf-cutter ants, carried the leaves on their backs.

She screamed as the ants scrambled over her feet. She tried to slap them away but they kept coming, hundreds of them. She started to run when her high heels caught in the dirt. Headlong, she tumbled into a mud puddle, to the delight of the children who laughed at her.

At least that pompous action hero hadn’t witnessed her fall.

Eden wiped herself off with the T-shirt and, in the process, shed even more of her dark coating. The Indians found that especially funny, but she was too tired to care.

She collapsed onto a boulder by the moribund river. A
thick, black film coated its surface. Gobs of debris—diapers, clothes and animal carcasses—cluttered the shore. Nearby, several canoes with small outboard motors bobbed beside a rickety dock.

One of the Huaorani with a surprisingly gentle face carried Eden’s father towards her. A heavy-set warrior pulled a huge leaf, at least nine feet long, from a giant banana tree and laid it next to her on the ground. To Eden’s surprise the men set her father down on the huge leaf. He looked like a fragile baby cradled in a green boat. That was the extent of comfort here—a leaf for a bed.

“Residue from oil mining,” her father said, indicating the murky water. “My hypothesis is the tribe sold their oil rights long ago, probably for worthless cash. I suspect no one ever explained the consequences.”

Eden could see what the trip had cost him. His eyes were pinched and red, the bandaged leg, bloody, once more.